Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2004 Issue
Searching the Old Book Sites:<br>Something Old, Something New
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From a consumer's standpoint, the ZVAB "Detailed Search" is very good. It lets you search in just about any way imaginable. Results are presented in an easy to follow format. Naturally, this is going to be a particularly good site for those seeking continental European books, but might yield a surprise in terms of American books offered by European sellers. For American sellers, it may yield some new customers, particularly for your European books. How many is not clear, since sites like Abebooks have really become international, but from what I understand, American dealers are picking up a few new sales from ZVAB. No, it is not a major part of their business, but it does appear to be adding a few extra sales.
Finally, some readers recommended use of the multi-search engines. These are the sites which search other listing sites, rather than list books themselves. While these can be very useful for the consumer, I skipped them simply because, though writing as a consumer, I expected my audience would be primarily dealers. As a bookseller, you cannot put your books for sale on a site such as AddAll, you can only offer them for sale on one of the sites AddAll searches. Actually, I did include one such multi-search site: Froogle. They don't sell books either, but only search sites that do. However, I included Froogle because they are willing to search your own personal website, whereas the others will only search other sites that carry listings from many booksellers, such as an Abebooks or Alibris.
Technically, you would think this type of search would equalize the bookselling sites. You get equal access to an AddAll search if your books are listed on an obscure (and perhaps cheaper) site as you get from having your books listed on Abe or Alibris. Certainly AddAll receives many visitors, but for whatever reason, the existence of such multi-search sites has not gone very far towards equalizing the big and small bookselling sites. Otherwise you would expect to find as many dealers selling on Maremagnum as on Abebooks. The reality is, if you want to sell in volume, you still need to list with the high volume sites.
Here are a few links with more information:
For those who missed last month's article, go to www.americanaexchange.com/NewAE/aemonthly/article.asp?f=1&page=1&id=181
For an earlier review of the multi-search sites, see www.americanaexchange.com/NewAE/aemonthly/article_1.asp?id=132&q=addall&page=1
Joel Kovarsky of The Prime Meridian has notified us of an article he wrote about the online sites. His primary focus is old maps, and some things have changed since the article was first written, but it provides another interesting comparison of bookselling sites on the web from the perspective of a seller. See www.theprimemeridian.com/webbooks.html
